Privacy Lost—SCAN Put Me on Youtube

I just returned from India a few days ago (see my new Department picture) and getting back to serious academic work is pretty rough after more than three weeks out in the wild … So I just spent a few minutes procrastinating and googling myself. Doing so, I found a youtube video of my short presentation at the First Annual SCAN Retreat. I should watch the video and use it to improve on my English pronunciation, I guess.

P.S. I also found the SCAN certificate in my mailbox when I returned. I’m completely done with classes now, scientific and non-scientific!
P.P.S. Just realized they also put up a testimonial, taken from an email I sent to Martha after my HSS panel last November. I seem to be a quite popular SCAN graduate.

Adding One more Critique to the Ingalhalikar et al. 2013 Controversy

Here is a critique of Ingalhalikar et al.’s study I should have linked to almost a year ago: Daphna Joel and Ricardo Tarrasch‘s “On the Mis-Presentation and Misinterpretation of Gender-Related Data: The Case of Ingalhalikar’s Human Connectome Study.” Anelis Kaiser just drew my attention to it. Check out their remarks on presentation of data and statistics in this very short and crisp letter.

Size Matters—the Story Won’t End

Out of loyalty, I won’t share much of the email exchanges I’ve witnessed over the course of the past two days—both amongst neuroscientists and amongst the “queer folks.” But here’s what happened: Ingalhalikar et al. published an article in late 2013 revealing the allegedly true cause for the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional differences between men and women. At least, that’s how the popular press translated the reported results of sex differences in structural brain connections between female and male brains. I reviewed the study and many voices have been much more critical than mine.

In the meantime, Jürgen Hänggi et al. have published a paper suggesting that the above-mentioned structural brain connections correlate with brain size. This bolsters Neuroskeptic’s and others’ assumption that the measured effects in Ingalhalikar et al. 2013 are themselves a consequence of the bigger average brain size in men, and not any direct cause of stereotypical behavior. Continue reading